Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Long before his big stage breakthrough in 1973 in Hamburg, and 4.4 million records sold, the rock musician Udo Lindenberg from the Westphalian province, the man with the long hair and the hat, had many adventures. Before it all started, he moved from the remoteness of Gronau to Hamburg, where he met Paula, who was not his great love, but was quite a hottie. When the team of three was complete with Steffi Stephan, the idea of founding a band developed. But the road to get there was a long one: he drummed as a jazz drummer in bands, had a highly dangerous performance in a US military base in the middle of the Libyan desert and always believed in making it to the very top.
Lindenberg! Mach dein Ding follows a fairly conventional music biopic trajectory — young dreamer from the provinces works his way up through hardships to eventual breakthrough. The plot hits familiar genre beats without much structural innovation. Acting is competent and energetic, capturing the spirit of the era reasonably well. Cinematography is serviceable with period-appropriate aesthetic choices but nothing particularly distinctive. Novelty is limited as the film largely recycles the standard 'rise of a rock star' formula, and while Udo Lindenberg is a colorful subject, the film doesn't find a uniquely cinematic language to tell his story. The ending, arriving at his 1973 Hamburg breakthrough, feels somewhat abrupt and unsatisfying as a narrative payoff — it marks the start rather than a true culmination.